Comments | bram: Random House, Brick House: Boulder Co-ops

bram

Random House, Brick House: Boulder Co-ops

Jul 06, 2001 16:59

This will be a long entry--my memories of the Boulder co-op house I lived in back in 1994-1995. Here as far as I can tell is the sole record on the internet of the existence of this community.

BeginningsThe idea behind the co-op was that a bunch of people--largely but not exclusively college students--would live together in a house, in a spirit ( Read more... )

boulder, personal history, social life, co-op

Comments 18

sebab July 6 2001, 18:14:20 UTC

wow, this is really interesting ( ... )

bram July 6 2001, 19:23:17 UTC

Glad you liked the entry--I've heard that Ithaca is a great place for co-ops.

As for hummus, you must have missed my discussion with fauxpas about hummus. Go back to my entry on cosmic coincidences with Bowen fluorescence and the anthropic principle and look at the comments. That's what inspired me to cook hummus tonight. Fauxpas may be interested in the recipe in EBF as well.

ex_fauxpas266 July 6 2001, 19:34:30 UTC

Orange-flavored hummus? Hmm...

Re: sebab July 14 2001, 00:12:14 UTC

heh, fun part is, I can find almost no evidence online of my co-op! one guy who I think lives there now, or at least did recently, has a picture on his web page, though.

reme July 6 2001, 20:00:44 UTC

wow.. this is a really interesting story. i'm intrigued.

i hope you don't think i have mashed potato brains for posting my horoscope in my livejournal. it's for entertainment purposes only, i swear. :p

bram July 6 2001, 20:34:58 UTC

Well, being an astronomer accounts for some of my hostility towards astrology. I think there was one horoscope column that was a complete joke--maybe it was called Real Astrology?--that I thought was very funny.

reme July 6 2001, 20:41:30 UTC

Don't tell anyone, but sometimes the copy editors where I work get bored and change things in the horoscope, such as lucky numbers and whatnot. And once we didn't have the horoscope for that day, so we ran one from a few months earlier. So even if astrology WAS accurate, that wouldn't ensure that your horoscopes were!

leora July 6 2001, 22:03:39 UTC

personae non grata :) Thank you. That's the term. That was a really interesting entry. Politics bleh. By the way, while I don't believe in astrology, it is theoretically possible that being born at different times of the year tends to have an effect on the environment and thus on the personality of a child. So astrology ~could~ be based on observing trends. Especially back when culture was more varied during each season, harvesting, planting, etc. Now a days there isn't as big a difference between winter and summer to most of us.

bram July 6 2001, 22:33:55 UTC

I'm pretty sure the term for the singular is persona non grata; I extrapolated in my ignorance that the plural must be personae non grata.

I would think that effect would also make things different if the child was born in the northern or southern hemisphere, but as far as I know astrologers don't pay attention to that (the idea would be too scientific?)

leora July 6 2001, 22:41:35 UTC

Actually, as far as I know, they do. Those who take it seriously want to know exactly where and when you were born. And then they do something with that info to draw up some complicated chart. But since astrology doesn't particularly interest me, I don't know the details.

ex_fauxpas266 July 7 2001, 17:43:24 UTC

OH MY GOD! I used to go door to door for CalPIRG! It was the worst job of my life! I didn't even last a week! Since I worked free the first day, my paycheck came out to be $18 or something. Totally not worth it for the utter hell I endured for three long, long days!

bram July 8 2001, 10:48:55 UTC

I don't think we INTPs find "salesmanship" very easy!

We had a quota of $80 a day, and I think at first we were only required to average the quota each week. Then at the end, if we missed quota two days in a row, we were out! I was out. But I'd stayed there two months or so on the earlier policy.

It depended a lot on what area you were canvassing. Rich liberals = Best, Poor conservatives = Worst. Sometimes we could tell by the car in the driveway. This was before SUVs. The car of choice was the Volvo, apparently favored by liberals. I think my biggest check ($100? $150?) was from a guy who had both a Volvo and a Porsche, in Ridgewood, NJ. But I also had days when I would only take in a few bucks.

Hi, my name is Bram, and I'm from NJ PIRG, the state's leading environmental and consumer group. Perhaps you've heard of us? We've taken 19 of the state's worst water-polluting companies to court, and won in every single case! This year, we're working to pass a Can and Bottle Bill that would put a 5 or 10 cent deposit on ( ... )

ex_fauxpas266 July 8 2001, 20:23:14 UTC

Yeah, I'm pretty sure our quota was $80/day too. On my second day I made $79. I still had about 45 minutes until the others were going to pick me up, but I just didn't have it in me to knock on any more doors! So I sat at the corner waiting for them all that time.

If I recall correctly, we had to make quota (but it was okay if we didn't during our first week), but we didn't get any commission unless we exceeded quota. Or something like that...?!?

We were canvassing in Pacific Beach which is really liberal though. Lots of UCSD students too.

We were campaigning about some issue that had to do with chemical companies. I don't remember my spiel anymore, though! I was supposed to ask everyone for a $50 donation but I didn't have the guts. I asked everyone for $25. And then one guy actually gave me the $25, which made me think I should have asked for $50! Oh well.

can you hear the music? corydale February 18 2004, 02:12:25 UTC

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